


In Which We Do Not See the Dacha

by Sera_Clay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2787053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_Clay/pseuds/Sera_Clay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzington PWP</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which We Do Not See the Dacha

It's been almost six weeks since Elizabeth Keen has seen or talked with Raymond Reddington. The only blacklister at large, Blue Mink, is deep in Russia, visiting family; they're going to have to wait for her to complete her visit. 

After revealing a little about her, Reddington had offered a plan to smoke Blue Mink out - "a select little dinner party at my dacha" - but Liz turned him down even before Cooper could object.

So Reddington expressed his regrets, sauntered out of the Post Office, and dropped out of communication.

Liz focuses on other assignments and tries not to think about him too much. She misses Reddington more and more, and it worries at the back of her mind. She has work she believes in, good friends, a new one bedroom apartment that she's slowly furnishing to her own taste. 

So why does she keep watching the streets, in crowds, on the train, for a trench coat perfectly fitted to a pair of broad shoulders? She misses him, and although it seems absurd even to her, she worries about him.

He's never been out of touch for this long, and all the phone numbers she has for him have long since stopped working. And without any good reason, she can't bring herself to ask around at the office to see if anyone has a more recent number.

***

Harold Cooper isn't worried about Reddington, he's suspicious, and he has contacts of his own. It's almost the end of her shift when Cooper summons Liz to his office, closing the door behind her and motioning her to a seat. 

"Take a seat - I have something to show you."

Cooper spills the pictures out of an unmarked manila envelope onto his desk.

Liz leans forward and draws the first one towards her with the tip of her forefinger.

"When were these taken?" she asks quietly, spreading all seven photos out along the edge of the desk.

"In the last four weeks." Cooper points to each picture. "JAG in Seattle. CIA, in Chicago awaiting re-assignment. LA Detective Captain - with serious connections to the mob."

There were two photos of each woman, full face and in profile, evidently the best of a larger selection. Three petite, dark-haired women eating lunch with an obviously attentive Reddington. Unprecedented, these photos of him taken without his knowledge.

The last picture is a group, bright-faced men and women in athletic clothes. She recognizes the practice field, the gymnasium behind them.

Liz swallows hard.

"This last one is the incoming class at Quantico. Reddington traded one of his old acquaintances the names and photos of three previously unknown Saudi terrorists for a copy of it, complete with names."

"And this person just gave it to him?" Liz asks in surprise.

Cooper shrugs. "Actionable intelligence?" 

"You think he's recruiting?" she asks, touching the edge of another of the photos. Smiling at Red, they all look a bit like her, it's something beyond their coloring and hairstyles. Her analyst's mind supplies the answer.

Young, armed, and dangerous. 

"Did you say or do something the last time you spoke to him, Agent Keen? Something that would make him think that cutting a new deal with some other agency would be preferable to continuing to work with us?"

Liz shakes her head, feeling her eyes widening slightly even as she fights to stay calm.

"You were there, sir, I just said ....."

Liz closes her eyes and her words come back to her.

'I'm not going to Russia alone with you, we're not the CIA.'

She opens her eyes to Cooper's frown.

"I'm sorry, but from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're being replaced."

She prefers the frown to the pity looming in Cooper's eyes.

"I never understood why he wanted to work with me, sir" she answers woodenly. "We never found any connection between Reddington and my childhood." What else can she say?

Cooper sweeps up the photographs and slides them back into the envelope.

"You did a lot of good work together" he says as he tucks the envelope away in his desk. "If you do hear from Reddington again, try to go along with whatever he suggests?"

Reddington was the one who told her he knew Sam.

"Yes, sir" replies Liz, and then she's out the door, out on the street, it's dark and she is walking faster than feels comfortable. As if she can walk away from the images.

For some reason she doesn't just see Red eating lunch with those women, she imagines him flirting in his high-handed way, their rapid response to his charm, innuendo permeating their heated conversations. He wasn't touching them in the photos, but she can see it in her mind's eye, the way he used to stand close to her.

Liz almost breaks a heel on a subway grating - she needs to look where she's walking.

***

Red calls her two days later.

It's nine o'clock at night and she's already in her cotton knit pajama shorts, reading in bed. She often ends up in bed early these days - she works out early in the morning, and she tries to get to sleep by 10:00.

She hasn't been sleeping well, and the last two nights have been filled with bizarre, erotic dreams about Reddington. She's naked, making love with him in all kinds of contorted, almost acrobatic positions, and just as she reaches her climax he does something horrible and monstrous, and she wakes up drenched in sweat, shaking equally with fear and arousal.

Liz is sure that if she writes them down, she can make a Freudian analyst wealthy.

The phone startles out of her fruitless speculation. She's read the same page of her murder mystery three times already.

"Lizzie? I need you to come over to the house. Let me give you the address."

"Red? When do you want me to come over?"

"Write down the address, Lizzie. I want you to come over right now. You can easily arrive here by ten o'clock."

Liz puts her phone on speaker and punches in the address as he recites it - a row house on the other side of town.

"Red?!?" she says in exasperation, but he's already hung up on her.

Liz grumbles but she climbs out of bed, giving Joseph a pat as she heads for the bathroom. 

Make-up, black slacks and sweater, low heels and holster, and a long coat with a thinly woven blue cashmere scarf tucked in the right hand pocket for later in the evening, when it always gets windy.

She doesn't let herself think about why she rummaged though her drawers for the blue scarf when the gray one was right on top. 

Liz arrives at the house scant minutes before ten, winding the scarf around her neck before she rings the bell.

She doesn't know what to expect, but it's not Red answering the door himself in his robe and slippers.

He's clean-shaven, bright-eyed and smiling as he ushers her in and offers to take her coat.

Liz shakes her head and tosses her coat onto the French provincial couch to her right, leaving the scarf looped around her neck. The row house is narrow, with high, ornate ceilings, and the fragile, gilt-edged furniture and old master paintings are in stark contrast to Red's heavy, green silk robe and matching slippers.

His ankles are bare above the floor-length robe, and she can't tell if he's wearing anything under it at all.

She needs to get a grip because it feels like she's losing her mind.

"How have you been, Lizzie?" Red inquires in a solicitous tone. "Do sit down and let me pour you a glass of champagne."

Just as if he'd been away for days, not weeks. She can't help but notice how much she's missed the familiar smell of his expensive cologne.

Red ushers her into the living room, where a champagne bucket stands beside two glasses, one empty and one half-full.

"What are we celebrating?" Liz asks him, looking around but not seeing or hearing anyone else. The row house must have excellent insulation, because there is no street noise, only the light ticking of the mantel clock.

"Do sit down, Lizzie" says Red languidly, taking a sip of his champagne and turning the bottle so she can read the gold label before setting it back into the ice. "Roederer Cristal, always dependable."

Liz sits on the sofa and Red seats himself beside her, laying one arm on the back of the sofa behind her. He's not touching her, but he's close. Very close.

"Why did I need to come here tonight?" Liz asks, watching Red's face as she sips her champagne. It's delicious, creamy, with tiny bubbles. "Do you have another blacklister for me? I mean, for us?" 

"Oh, Lizzie, always talking about work" says Red with a little shake of his head. 

"What else do you want to talk about?" she asks, meeting his eyes with an effort.

Please let it not be those women. Please let it not be good-bye.

"When you have a decision to make Lizzie, an important, personal decision, do you make it slowly, carefully? Or quickly, intuitively?"

Liz can feel her polite smile fading. Her last few decisions had all concerned Tom. It hadn't mattered how she made those choices - she was always acting on misinformation.

"Are you asking me for advice?" she parries.

Red sighs and tilts his glass a little, watching the bubbles. 

"You would have enjoyed the dacha, Lizzie."

Liz purses her lips.

"Maybe" she says with a little shake of her head, finishing her glass and holding it out for a refill.

Red pours for them both without spilling a drop. Liz watches his pale, well-tended hands, not large, not particularly elegant, but supremely competent.

Red makes her feel safe, makes her want to stretch, to take risks. His idea of comfortable is making her stronger, smarter, more capable. More herself.

She wants to keep putting her life in those hands.

"Red?" Liz asks, not realizing she's moving closer and putting out her hand to touch his upper arm until she feels the slide of silk in her grip.

They both freeze for an instant.

Red looks down at her hand and his eyes go liquid even as his facial expression doesn't change at all. 

If he has one at all, Liz thinks in panic, that's his tell, the complete, fleeting suppression of any response until Red decides what apparently spontaneous movement to make. 

"Lizzie?" he says softly, his voice so low she can barely hear it, and there's her answer.

Setting her champagne glass down without letting go of Red's arm, Liz shifts a little in her seat and lays her other hand on Red's knee. Slowly, cautiously, half-expecting him to flinch away, with one hand she learns the muscles of his arm, the hard curve of his shoulder, runs her nails through the faint sprinkle of hair visible at his wrist.

She tucks the other between his knees, parting the robe just enough to stroke the inside of his bare thigh.

He just sits there watching her, his eyes on her face, his lips barely parted.

She wants to kiss him, but she's afraid to break the spell of her hands moving on him, watching faint color rise in his face and spread to his neck.

Even more slowly, Liz moves her hands to the belt of his robe, untying in, folding the edges of his robe back in neat layers as if performing some solemn ceremony. She slides it down off his shoulders, revealing him fully. 

"Lizzie?" he says again, even more quietly. If she weren't so close to him now she can almost feel his breath she would have thought she imagined it.

She licks his lips, very delicately, then lets her eyes play over him.

He's hard for her already, not wearing anything at all but his slippers.

With both palms she explores him with feather touches, soft hair and hard nipples and the velvet feel of him as he breathes and watches her avidly, fine tremors all that betray his control. She leans down and laps at him, her mouth so wet and open, enjoying the feel of her tongue swiping up and down his length.

Enjoying the salty taste of him, new and unique and infinitely pleasing.

He's getting closer, she feels the tension drawing him tighter, so she engulfs him in her mouth, wetly sucking him now, allowing herself little murmurs of appreciation as she lightly traces random patterns around his groin with her nails.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" 

His voice is higher than she's ever heard it. Lizzie pulls back just enough to see that Red's eyes are closed and his mouth is open wide and his back is arching to get back as deep in her mouth as he can.

Liz takes a deep breath through her nose, bends her head, and concentrates on pleasuring Red as he becomes increasingly incoherent.

"Yes, yes, uh, ah, ah.."

His hands are in her hair now, not tugging but just grabbing loose handfuls and then she feels his fingertips against her skull, holding her precisely in place as he thrusts, and her hands are at his hips, and she's swallowing and swallowing and Red is just making sounds now and she never wants it to end.

She never wants it to end.

Somehow, Liz has slipped down to crouch on the floor and her head is on Red's thigh as he strokes her tangled hair with one hand, then the other.

He's lying back on the couch, knees spread wide, head back, staring up at the ceiling.

"I suppose that it's clear to you now what we're celebrating?"

Red's voice is rich and relaxed, warmer than she's ever heard him when speaking to her.

Liz looks up at Red and finds that he has lifted his head and is gazing down at her, positively beaming with approval.

"Our ongoing partnership?" guesses Liz, lifting one eyebrow in challenge. Red bursts into laughter.

"To our beautiful future together, Lizzie" he agrees.

Red caresses her cheek with his knuckles and Liz turns her face into his hand and presses her lips to his palm.


End file.
